Well I finally got the boat into some saltwater after taking the family to Yamba for Christmas for the first time. The place is amazing with heaps of areas to fish in the Clarence River, with no end of sand bars and markers to keep you busy dodging in and around.

The boat ramps there in my opinion are second to none. There are multiple ramps in Yamba, with most of them supported by a small pontoon jetty. The dual ramp set-ups come with boat wash down facilities and water taps to flush your motor. To top it off the fish cleaning tables are practical to use. The car parks although not huge were clean and easy to move around. Most of the ramps have a playground or park next to them for the kids to run around on. Here is a boating/fishing area, which has itself sorted out.

The weather in the morning was fine however the afternoon storms would move through and dampen things a bit with the associated wind making things a bit bumpy on the water.

The fishing although not great was pleasing. We managed to pick up Bream and Flathead every outing. This trip was my first, targeting fish solely with soft plastics. Lucky my hints to the wife leading up to Christmas resulted in Santa leaving me a nice array of plastics and jig heads. The guys here at Fish N Bits in Toowoomba were on the ball and I was the recipient of some nice 3 inch Berkley minnows which did most of the damage for me. The kids used local fresh prawns and squid, which kept them busy, whilst I didn’t out fish the bait fraternity in some locations it was interesting to see that in others I couldn’t stop catching fish. Horses for courses as they say.

I took out a couple of people who had never fished before. Seeing the look on one of the guys face as his line was peeled off on a little 2kg outfit was memorable. I was asked what he should do. I just replied “Hang On”. Unluckily the fish dropped the bait but the resultant fishing story over a few beers later that day was worth the danger you put yourself in trying to show a newcomer how to cast without ripping someone’s shirt off or taking an eye out with a sinker.

Being new to the area we covered a lot of ground. We did manage to find a couple of locations, which produced fish though. One such area is the mud flats opposite Browns Rocks in the main river. The main channel is about 12m deep whilst the flats got down to 1-2m at high tide. We managed to drift a lot of this flats area in the morning before the wind picked up. The flats produced fish up to 65cm with most of them being in the 30cm zone. As we drifted we found a nice little creek entrance, which was holding some nice bream. The little guys were having a field day at the entrance chasing small bait fish. We only kept a couple of fish for the table.

Another area, which produced fish for us, was directly opposite the boat ramp. A channel had carved very close into the bank resulting in a few toppled trees in the water. Again the bream were found loitering in amongst the snags. We managed to pull quite a few out of the sticks.

The pub down on the water was a great little trip. After a couple of beverages and a nice lunch we got onto the pontoon used by the boating fraternity to access the pub. Beneath the pontoon was a huge school of Bream. I managed to hand feed some of them and still kept my digits intact.

We didn’t manage to get outside the river mouth as the seas were quite large and there were no reports of anyone doing to good out that way.

All in all a nice piece of Australia.

Hey Dex,
Great post, good to hear of something a little different.
It's always great to go to a new spot and suss things out yourself!! Well done.
Cheers Muntzy.

Ahh Dex, you almost make me jelous. I used to fish Yamba a fair bit.. had a fine old time on bream luderick and flatties inside and some great snapper, jew, bonito, kingies and macs of various species outside.

ts a good spot but getting a bit pricy now I hear

Thanks for the report

Chris

G'day Dex,

Good to see you giving "Y not" an outing and what a special place to do it. We ventured off to Yamba from Toowoomba every year during the Christmas holidays for about 7 years. The place was voted the most livable town in Australia last year and rightfully so.

On your next visit do yourself a favour and ditch the soft plastics and target the weed beds opposite the tavern with small hard bodies similar to what you use when targeting bass. In the clear water around the weed beds the bigger flatties lay in ambush and watching them strike the lure is spectacular. Pound for pound the old flattie strikes harder than a barra and when fishing light gear they are terrific fun.

If you are keen to catch dinosaur sized flatties, drift a live mullet down the centre wall, just be careful how you gather you lives as cast nets are banned in NSW. May through to August is best for the really big fish.

Is the Two Fat Chefs cafe still operating and did you have a crack at the Cowabunga Burger, those things will send you into instant cardiac arrest.....yum, yum, yum

Kaz and I had seriously considered retiring to Yamba, the thing that put us off was the terrible hail storms that pass through during the summer months. Grafton gets smashed first and then Yamba gets what's let over. We have experienced hail at Yamba the size of oranges.

Say g'day to Ros and the girls for me.

cheers,

dno

Thanks for the advice. I should have spoken to you before I went, it would have saved a bit of fuel.

I didn't see the two fat chefs restaurant. But was impressed with the bowls club, which was sensational. The tavern on the water had great foos and an awesome outlook also.

See ya

Dex

Great to have a report from that way.

Brisbane also gets the big hail, wouldn't worry bout it too much, doesn't happen that often. Just keep a WWII helmet in your fishing kit

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